it was seventy-five outside…eighty-two in the house….an Indian blanket covered the old man as he slept in half darkness with a night-light shining….showing a path..

pop…asleep in the living-room Lazyboy….with a glass of melted ice and Pepsi can by his side….just lay there…scars exposed…liver-spots revealed…old-age had come…

how strange to look at him…this different man…no longer a traveller …neither a driver…an engineer…a cook…or a bagger…just a body in wait…

and… he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for…maybe for heaven on high…perhaps Buddha’s notion of nothingness….a vision from Vishnu….not a single prophet on the horizon…

he waits…and he waits….and he waits…maybe to go see mom….go settle a score with a father who was a roust-a-bout….or a wife….Southern gentleness who took Faulkner too far….

waiting for something…some-thing to take him away….it’s over….

and he knows it…